30-Day Music Producer Challenge
Build momentum, develop real-world production skills, and finish more music with a guided roadmap designed for modern house and electronic music producers. This challenge is designed to help you stay creative, consistent, and inspired — whether you complete it in 30 days or move through it at your own pace.
The goal isn’t perfection. The goal is progress.
Finish a Track & Submit Your Project
Your goal is simple: finish a track using the workflows, techniques, and systems from the 30-Day Producer Challenge.
Once completed, you can submit your project to Raven Studios for a chance to be featured in: Community feedback sessions | Producer breakdown videos | Live review streams | Raven Studios showcases
Note: Due to the number of submissions, not every track can be reviewed individually.
The real goal is to build momentum, consistency, and the ability to finish music with confidence.
Recommended Pr-requisites
Before diving into the roadmap we recommend the following two courses as per-requisites on your production journey. Learn how creative restrictions and reference tracks can help you make faster decisions, build ideas without overthinking, and maintain momentum before perfectionism gets in the way. You’ll also discover workflow habits used by professional producers to move from ideas to finished arrangements more efficiently.
D.Ramirez’s Template for House & Tech
In this course I’m breaking down my personal Ableton Live template for house and tech house. This is the exact setup I use every time I start a track. By the end, you’ll see how I’ve built everything to be ready-to-go the moment I open Live — so I can get straight into the creative…
How to Finish More Music
A workflow-focused course built around momentum, speed, and creative restrictions. In this course, D. Ramirez shows you how to stop overthinking, make faster decisions, and get from a blank project to a full arrangement as quickly as possible using limitations, reference tracks, and instinctive creativity.
PHASE 1: DRUMS AND GROOVE
Learn how to create grooves that feel powerful, musical, and club-ready from the very beginning. This phase focuses on building stronger grooves by programming drums with feel, movement, and intentional rhythmic variation. You’ll learn how to create rhythms that keep listeners engaged while reducing creative overwhelm, so you can develop faster, more effective production habits and workflows.
DRUMS
Building Drums With Roland Cloud’s 909, 808, 707, 727 & 606
In this course, I show you how to build powerful house and tech house drum grooves using Roland Cloud’s classic drum machines. I break down each unit, demonstrate workflow techniques, and show you how to quickly create, edit, and layer patterns to form the backbone of a professional track.
Sampling Drums for House Music
Learn how to craft groovy, club-ready drum tracks using the power of sampling. In this course, D.Ramirez walks you through the essential techniques for building professional-sounding house drums — fast. Whether you’re making minimal, deep tech, or classic house, this course will supercharge your workflow and help you create drums that bounce.
Chicago House Grooves with Loopcloud
A detailed insight how to use Loopcloud by Loopmasters to build a Chicago House Inspired Drum Groove.
Using Rhythmizer on Drums, Bass & Melody
In this course Denney demonstrates how he uses Rhythmizer to help create Drums, Bass & Melody patterns and how it can generate some great ideas.
GROOVE & MOVEMENT (1) + WORKFLOW & CREATIVITY (2 – 3)
Creating Movement With Call & Response
Create more groove, movement and character in your tracks using call and response. I break down how to apply this simple but powerful technique across drums, bass and synths, helping you build parts that interact naturally and make your productions feel more dynamic
Limitation Series, Part One – Why You’re Not Finishing Music
Most producers assume that not finishing music is a skill issue — that they need better sounds, more knowledge, or more advanced techniques. But in reality, the problem is often much simpler… and much harder to see.
Limitation Series, Part Two – Build a Track Using Limitation (No-Friction Workflow)
In the previous lesson, we explored how friction — specifically too many decisions — is one of the main reasons producers struggle to finish music. In this chapter, we take that idea out of theory and into practice. Instead of explaining the process step by step, this is about showing what happens when you remove…
PHASE 2: BASS & LOW-END CONTROL
Build basslines that work with your drums and learn how to create low-end that translates professionally. This module covers writing basslines for different styles of house music, understanding sub frequencies and low-end balance, making kick and bass work together properly, and creating groove through effective low-end interaction.
BASSLINE DESIGN (1 -2) + LOW-END FUNDAMENTALS (3)
How to Create Six Essential Basslines for House and Tech House
Today we’re looking at six essential bassline types you can use in house and tech house. These are the foundations — if you understand these six, you can build almost any modern groove, from dark rolling tech house to classic 90s vibes to melodic progressive. I’ll show you the sound design, the MIDI, the groove,…
Creating Acid Basslines Using ABL Basslines VST
A full explanation on how to create acid basslines using this Roland TB-303 emulator.
Sub Bass Science: Get That Low-End Right
Let’s talk sub bass — that deep, wobbly magic that rattles your neighbour’s teeth and either makes or breaks your mix. Whether you’re producing techno, trap, or just want your track to hit harder than your caffeine habit — this is for you. I’m gonna break it all down into four tasty chapters. Let’s dive…
PHASE 3: SYNTHS, SAMPLING & VOCALS
Discover how to create musical ideas, unique textures, and vocal-driven hooks that give your music personality. Learn how to write melodies and chord progressions faster, develop your own unique sound, and use creative sample manipulation techniques to make your music stand out. You’ll also learn modern vocal production and how to integrate AI tools into your workflow to speed up creativity and production.
SYNTHS & SOUND DESIGN
90’s Inspired House Music – Which Synths to Use?
In this course, I break down the classic synth sounds behind 90s-inspired house music and show you exactly…
Synths for House Music
In this course, I break down 8 of my go-to synths for house music production and show you…
Using Captain Chords to Write Chords and Melodies
This course shows how I use Captain Chords to quickly create chords, melodies, and musical ideas without relying on advanced music theory. I cover setup, progression building, routing through VSTs, exporting MIDI and audio, adding effects, and using inbuilt sounds to inspire new track ideas. The goal is to help you unlock creativity and build…
Using StemCellz VST Plug-ins
In this course we take a look at StemCellz plug-ins. These are very well designed, easy to use and cost effective plug-ins for your productions.
SAMPLING & CREATIVITY
How to Chop a Sample Like Daft Punk
An in depth look at how to chop and manipulate samples like Daft Punk using Chop Beast.
Tips for Sample Searching
In this course, I walk you through my real-world approach to finding unique, usable samples for your productions. From digital digging to AI tools and vinyl crate digging, I cover practical techniques to source vocals and sounds that stand out while keeping your workflow creative and efficient.
VOCALS
Lyric to Vocal – Recording with AI
Want to write your own lyrics, record your vocals, and then transform your voice into something completely new…
Creating Vocals with Suno AI
in this course, I’ll show you how I use Suno and OpenAI’s ChatGPT as creative tools inside my music production workflow. I cover generating AI vocals, writing lyrics, exporting stems, and using AI to enhance your own ideas while still staying creatively in control.
Manipulating Vocals with Ace Studio
This course takes a look at ‘Ace Studio’ a professional AI voice generator
Cleaning Up Samples – Supertone’s Clear
In this video Denney takes a look at Supertone’s Clear. Clear is a de-noise & de-reverb audio plug-in that is really easy to use. Three simple knobs control the voice, ambience, and voice reverb, allowing you to achieve perfectly clear voice with just a few twists.
PHASE 4: ARRANGEMENT & ENERGY
Learn how to structure tracks professionally, build tension and release, maintain listener engagement, create smoother transitions and more impactful drops, and turn simple loops into complete records.
ARRANGEMENT
Like Dis Arrangement P.T.1
Arranging ‘Like Dis’: A Structured Approach to Track Development
Like Dis Arrangement P.T.2
Break down, refine, and structure your track section by section using the Subtractive Arrangement Method.
A Peak Time House Track Arrangement
In this course, I take you step-by-step through the complete arrangement of a peak-time house track, sharing my full production process from start to finish.
TRANSITION & ENERGY
Transition Techniques
In this course I break down how I create smooth, musical transitions in my own productions. I cover…
Elevate Your Track – Advanced Techniques
Take your production to the next level with cutting-edge resampling, transitions, FX, and arrangement polish.
PHASE 5: Mixing & Mastering
Take your productions from rough ideas to release-ready records. Learn how to create cleaner, more powerful mixes by improving punch, width, and clarity, using top-down drum mixing workflows, and applying modern loudness and mastering techniques for electronic music.
Mixing Foundations
Mixing Fundamentals
Build solid mixing habits, master your tools, and deliver clean, balanced, professional-sounding tracks.
Mix Anywhere
Learn to produce and mix anywhere using headphones and laptop speakers. Focus on balance, clarity, and musical intent and verify with a final real-world listen—no expensive studio required.
LOW-END MIXING
Mixing Series E.P.1 – The Kick Drum
In this series of short mixing videos I’m going to show you how I mix my Kick Drum in House music.
Mixing Series P.T.2 – Mixing Bass That Works with the Kick
Welcome to part 2 of our mixing series. In part 1, we looked at how to mix the kick — and today, we’re moving on to the bass. I’m going to show you how to shape it with EQ, add character with saturation, control it with compression, and most importantly, make it interact perfectly with…
DRUM MIXING SYSTEM
Drum Buss Foundation – Tone, Glue & Energy
IInstead of spending hours tweaking every kick, clap, and hat in isolation, we’re going to start at the drum buss — shaping the overall tone, glue, and energy of the entire kit first. This approach helps you make faster, more musical decisions and keeps your drums sounding cohesive, punchy, and full of groove.
Saturation & Reductive EQ
This is Part 2 of 4 of our Mini Series, and in this one we’re focusing on two crucial stages in the drum buss chain — saturation and reductive EQ. These are the tonal foundations that come before compression, additive EQ, and final limiting or clipping — which we’ll be covering in future episodes.
Compression & Additive EQ
In this module, you’ll deepen your skills as you explore how compression, parallel compression, and additive EQ shape dynamic feel, punch, movement, clarity, and groove to bring the kit to life across modern productions.
Individual Drum Control, Clipping & Limiting
Now that we’ve shaped the overall tone and energy of the drums using a top-down approach, Part 4 takes us one step deeper. With the drum bus doing most of the heavy lifting, this chapter focuses on targeted refinement—coming down into the individual channels to apply subtle, precise control. This stage gives your drums that…
SPACE & WIDTH
Reverb: The Secret to Tight Drum Mixes
In this video, we’re diving into a powerful but often misunderstood technique for tightening up your drum mixes: using reverb as glue. Forget drowning your drums in space — we’re talking about subtle reverb that brings the whole kit together, adds cohesion, and makes it feel like your drums are playing with each other instead…
Stereo Width Demystified
Stereo width is one of the most powerful tools in mixing — and one of the most misunderstood. Many producers chase wider mixes without fully understanding what stereo width actually is, how it works, or why it so often causes problems when taken too far. The result is mixes that sound impressive at first, but…
MASTERING
Mastering ‘Like Dis’ – From Mix to Magic
Mastering Fundamentals – Loud, Clean & Release-Ready. Take your finished mix to a professional level with a structured, hands-on approach to mastering.